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The most amazing thing, to me, regarding React, is that it's a pretty awesome framework, from the perspective of a developer. ...and yet, I go and try to use F

The most amazing thing, to me, regarding React, is that it's a pretty awesome framework, from the perspective of a developer. ...and yet, I go and try to use Facebook, and the experience is totally fucking repellent. Even in a closed third-party testing loop, when you control for social variables and human factors, by populating your circle with only fake test accounts you control and have created yourself, for which no one else has the password. (e.g. staging a hypothetical sequence of events, to model an expected experience) Just trying to do anything is met with the most bizarre and byzantine behaviors and switcheroos.

vjeux 9y ago
Do you have specific examples of what makes "the experience is totally fucking repellent"? We can work on trying to fix them :)
- stefantheard 9y ago
  Opposite experience here. I usually reference FB as an example of a very close to optimal user experience given the magnitude of functionality. Rarely lost, easily discoverable, easy to use.
  - abiox 9y ago
    how much do you use FB? i wonder how much this assessment owes to familiarity.
    - stefantheard 9y ago
      thaaaaaaaaat's a great point. I use it very often. Daily for probably 4 years? more? It's likely that I am misjudging the usability given that it's basically a small extension of my life.
- terminado 9y ago
  I'm not trying to be disrespectful, and I fully understand that there's a huge, huge ream of people working to deliver Facebook, but honestly, I could fill multiple volumes of multiple books with the things that Facebook does wrong, and some of it is surely deliberate dark patterns, with specific behavioral objectives, but other aspects are not. Nevermind whether or not one agrees or disagrees with the all-encompassing nature of Facebook's grip on so many social circles, or whether one has an opinion about Facebook's policies and business practices, the website itself is pretty bad. Bad enough that, had I my druthers, I'd be able to create something that out-competes it, if a creation I put forward could clear the sheer gravitational inertia of the network effect that Facebook enjoys. And I realize that's no small claim, but here I am making it anyway. It's not your fault, specifically that shit sucks on Facebook all over, and I sincerely doubt you'd have the clout necessary to enact change. Since it'd be a lot to write up, and this is simply yet another peanut gallery web forum, I'll say this much: as a user, I am clueless about the decision tree I'm offered when I log into Facebook, furthermore, so much of Facebook is mystery meat links and who knows why I see half of any of it. Then as soon as a snippet of user-created content appears, it's buried. Go in to check the settings to see what the hell this system is trying to do for me, and I see trashy icons leading to incomplete features that don't even work as advertised, and I never get what I want, when used as directed. After about 30 some-odd clicks per any given session, and maybe 100 sessions of trying and retrying various combinations from a clean cookie, learned helplessness kicks in, I shut down my computer and find something better to do. BTW, this cuts across several assets and UI's throughout Facebook's offerings as a whole, for all devices.
  - terminado 9y ago
    Addendum: for an example of how it's done right, look at Slack. Slack has a completely different business model and general objective in serving the user, but divorcing this conversation from that fundamental idea, Slack (without being pretentious) gets it right 85% of the time, in that I'm able to do what I want, and get what I need. Facebook, on the other hand, is stepping in shit 75% of the time, and waxes manipulative when not seeming generally confusing and disorganized. And to return to the original subject at hand, compare Facebook (right now, today) to React's general website and documentation facelift. The comparison turns out to be surprisingly different in quality. (hint: facebook rates lower)
taude 9y ago
Yeah, I'm not seeing what's bad about the FB experience. Seems simple enough and intuitive to me. It might be a little bloated with features at the top level, but it's easy enough to ignore those. It's simple to scan the feed, post comments, send private messages....etc.
reaperducer 9y ago
This is why web developer and web designer are, and should be separate jobs. Too many companies think they're the same thing.
baddox 9y ago
Firstly, I disagree that the Facebook experience is that bad. The content of my social graph is pretty lame these days, but the website itself is pretty usable, and some features (okay, maybe just Messenger) are top tier. But secondly and more importantly, it seems bizarre to be amazed that a useful developer tool could be used to make a website that you don’t enjoy. Of course any decent developer tool could be used to make products that you enjoy as well as products you don’t enjoy.
- DigitalJack 9y ago
  The experience is petty bad when it comes to settings and configuration.
untog 9y ago
How is that in any way related to React? If you want to rant about Facebook then fine, but this thread isn't the place for it.
coldtea 9y ago
>Just trying to do anything is met with the most bizarre and byzantine behaviors and switcheroos. Apart from viewing your timeline, posting a status message, commenting on posts, sending messages, and liking things -- all of which seem pretty normal in use -- what else would you do? Anything else is probably a niche use, and not optimized (or having anyone care about it), including FB apps.
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  My biggest gripe (aside from the flood of stupid bullshit in my newsfeed which isn't directly Facebook's fault) is that the search bar at the top no longer lets me go straight to people's profiles. It'll go as far as giving autocompelte suggestions of people's full names, but then you click on the person you want and it gives you search results for them. I think they did this so that when you search for a name they can show you all the other shit that the person is tagged in, but all I wanted was to get to their wall and post something. Less charitably, by dumping you to an intermediate page and making you click again for their profile, FB gets to serve another batch of ads. And depending on what metric you measure it "increases engagement!!!" because it took me twice as long to get what I wanted.
dasil003 9y ago
This kind of seems like a non-sequitur. A tool is just a tool, it can be used to create both good and bad user experiences. In terms of the technical implementation of a complex website, especially with regard to latency and component rendering correctness/completeness, Facebook has long been the gold standard, even well before React was formalized and released.
- terminado 9y ago
  As a developer, I fully understand that the nails and girders used to assemble a building aren't expected to reflect the preferences embodied by the final construction they contribute to, but would you just look at the React website, and stand it next to Facebook itself? One looks and feels like shit, and the other does not. I'm just one guy with an opinion, but I strongly disagree that Facebook is a model example of a complex website. Facebook is blessed with a money hose, that ultimately washes away so many other problems, meanwhile provided that Facebook is not a network hardware and CDN company, I'd contest that if that's what they wind up bragging about, incidentally, then that's clearly a hint that they've gotten their core offerings wrong. Yes, Facebook started as a PHP garbage pile, and now it's got more going on, but the surface UX of Facebook remains a garbage pile, whether it's a fast garbage pile in terms of line speed, or a photo-realistic representation of a virtual garbage pile. If I can get consistent browsing results, productive interactions, and notice a presentable style and appearance on a React documentation website, which is a wholly-owned property of Facebook, then why isn't the flagship Facebook system provided to end-users with the same nuanced attention to detail?
  - Can_Not 9y ago
    To be fair, Facebook's profit model is in the end user's UX being good for ads, not for being good for the end user themselves.

vjeux 9y ago

Do you have specific examples of what makes "the experience is totally fucking repellent"? We can work on trying to fix them :)

stefantheard 9y ago
Opposite experience here. I usually reference FB as an example of a very close to optimal user experience given the magnitude of functionality. Rarely lost, easily discoverable, easy to use.
- abiox 9y ago
  how much do you use FB? i wonder how much this assessment owes to familiarity.
  - stefantheard 9y ago
    thaaaaaaaaat's a great point. I use it very often. Daily for probably 4 years? more? It's likely that I am misjudging the usability given that it's basically a small extension of my life.
terminado 9y ago
I'm not trying to be disrespectful, and I fully understand that there's a huge, huge ream of people working to deliver Facebook, but honestly, I could fill multiple volumes of multiple books with the things that Facebook does wrong, and some of it is surely deliberate dark patterns, with specific behavioral objectives, but other aspects are not. Nevermind whether or not one agrees or disagrees with the all-encompassing nature of Facebook's grip on so many social circles, or whether one has an opinion about Facebook's policies and business practices, the website itself is pretty bad. Bad enough that, had I my druthers, I'd be able to create something that out-competes it, if a creation I put forward could clear the sheer gravitational inertia of the network effect that Facebook enjoys. And I realize that's no small claim, but here I am making it anyway. It's not your fault, specifically that shit sucks on Facebook all over, and I sincerely doubt you'd have the clout necessary to enact change. Since it'd be a lot to write up, and this is simply yet another peanut gallery web forum, I'll say this much: as a user, I am clueless about the decision tree I'm offered when I log into Facebook, furthermore, so much of Facebook is mystery meat links and who knows why I see half of any of it. Then as soon as a snippet of user-created content appears, it's buried. Go in to check the settings to see what the hell this system is trying to do for me, and I see trashy icons leading to incomplete features that don't even work as advertised, and I never get what I want, when used as directed. After about 30 some-odd clicks per any given session, and maybe 100 sessions of trying and retrying various combinations from a clean cookie, learned helplessness kicks in, I shut down my computer and find something better to do. BTW, this cuts across several assets and UI's throughout Facebook's offerings as a whole, for all devices.
- terminado 9y ago
  Addendum: for an example of how it's done right, look at Slack. Slack has a completely different business model and general objective in serving the user, but divorcing this conversation from that fundamental idea, Slack (without being pretentious) gets it right 85% of the time, in that I'm able to do what I want, and get what I need. Facebook, on the other hand, is stepping in shit 75% of the time, and waxes manipulative when not seeming generally confusing and disorganized. And to return to the original subject at hand, compare Facebook (right now, today) to React's general website and documentation facelift. The comparison turns out to be surprisingly different in quality. (hint: facebook rates lower)

taude 9y ago

Yeah, I'm not seeing what's bad about the FB experience. Seems simple enough and intuitive to me. It might be a little bloated with features at the top level, but it's easy enough to ignore those. It's simple to scan the feed, post comments, send private messages....etc.

reaperducer 9y ago

This is why web developer and web designer are, and should be separate jobs. Too many companies think they're the same thing.

baddox 9y ago

Firstly, I disagree that the Facebook experience is that bad. The content of my social graph is pretty lame these days, but the website itself is pretty usable, and some features (okay, maybe just Messenger) are top tier. But secondly and more importantly, it seems bizarre to be amazed that a useful developer tool could be used to make a website that you don’t enjoy. Of course any decent developer tool could be used to make products that you enjoy as well as products you don’t enjoy.

DigitalJack 9y ago
The experience is petty bad when it comes to settings and configuration.

untog 9y ago

How is that in any way related to React? If you want to rant about Facebook then fine, but this thread isn't the place for it.

coldtea 9y ago

>Just trying to do anything is met with the most bizarre and byzantine behaviors and switcheroos. Apart from viewing your timeline, posting a status message, commenting on posts, sending messages, and liking things -- all of which seem pretty normal in use -- what else would you do? Anything else is probably a niche use, and not optimized (or having anyone care about it), including FB apps.

wlesieutre 9y ago
My biggest gripe (aside from the flood of stupid bullshit in my newsfeed which isn't directly Facebook's fault) is that the search bar at the top no longer lets me go straight to people's profiles. It'll go as far as giving autocompelte suggestions of people's full names, but then you click on the person you want and it gives you search results for them. I think they did this so that when you search for a name they can show you all the other shit that the person is tagged in, but all I wanted was to get to their wall and post something. Less charitably, by dumping you to an intermediate page and making you click again for their profile, FB gets to serve another batch of ads. And depending on what metric you measure it "increases engagement!!!" because it took me twice as long to get what I wanted.

dasil003 9y ago

This kind of seems like a non-sequitur. A tool is just a tool, it can be used to create both good and bad user experiences. In terms of the technical implementation of a complex website, especially with regard to latency and component rendering correctness/completeness, Facebook has long been the gold standard, even well before React was formalized and released.

terminado 9y ago
As a developer, I fully understand that the nails and girders used to assemble a building aren't expected to reflect the preferences embodied by the final construction they contribute to, but would you just look at the React website, and stand it next to Facebook itself? One looks and feels like shit, and the other does not. I'm just one guy with an opinion, but I strongly disagree that Facebook is a model example of a complex website. Facebook is blessed with a money hose, that ultimately washes away so many other problems, meanwhile provided that Facebook is not a network hardware and CDN company, I'd contest that if that's what they wind up bragging about, incidentally, then that's clearly a hint that they've gotten their core offerings wrong. Yes, Facebook started as a PHP garbage pile, and now it's got more going on, but the surface UX of Facebook remains a garbage pile, whether it's a fast garbage pile in terms of line speed, or a photo-realistic representation of a virtual garbage pile. If I can get consistent browsing results, productive interactions, and notice a presentable style and appearance on a React documentation website, which is a wholly-owned property of Facebook, then why isn't the flagship Facebook system provided to end-users with the same nuanced attention to detail?
- Can_Not 9y ago
  To be fair, Facebook's profit model is in the end user's UX being good for ads, not for being good for the end user themselves.